Julie & Julia (2009)

If I may, I’d like to update comedian W.C. Fields’ wise words of warning. This one goes out to all would-be Hollywood starlets: "Never work with children or animals. And never ever work with Meryl Streep."

It’s a lesson learned the hard way by Amy Adams in Julie & Julia.

In the film, Adams plays Julie Powell, a woman on the verge of turning 30, whose Amherst College friends—with whom she regularly lunches but deeply despises—have gone on to be really successful. That is, if having jam-packed Palm Pilots, ringing Motorola StarTacs, and only ever eating Cobb salad is what it means to be successful. Meanwhile, Julie is just a sad-sack cubicle farmer working for the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, a government agency responsible for dealing with the aftermath of 9/11. She is powerless except to be the brunt of people’s considerable and justifiable hurt and rage, and acutely aware of it. To make it all worse, she has just moved with her husband Eric (Chris Messina) to a tiny apartment above a pizzeria on a noisy street in Long Island City, Queens. To be sure, this is a woman with not much joie in her vivre.

When Julie’s plump, gloomy face ends up on the cover of a glossy magazine in a feature about the perils of a directionless life, she decides to devote herself to the two things she loves the most: cooking and writing. She starts a blog, chronicling her intention to cook her way through all 524 recipes in Julia Child’s legendary “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” in the next 365 days.

Across time and space, Julia Child (Meryl Streep) also arrives with her husband Paul (Stanley Tucci) and a truck full of moving boxes. Their new home, a palatial estate in post-World War II Paris (1949, to be precise) is decidedly more romantic than Queens. As Streep exclaims in her spot-on Julia Child high-pitched warble, “It’s Versailles!” Paul has been relocated for his work as an attaché with the U.S. government’s Office of Strategic Services. Julia, once also an employee of the OSS, must now find something to occupy her time in Paris.

The answer comes to her in the form of a plate of sole meunieré, a heavenly dish of buttery, lemony fish that captivates her attention and sparks in her a love for exceptional French cooking. Despite having no previous formal training, she signs up for a master class at Le Cordon Bleu, much to the chagrin of the snooty female administrator and Julia’s all-male chef colleagues. And the audience has the pleasure of watching her coo—or more accurately, goose-honk—affectionately at platter after beautiful platter of lobsters, beignets, omelets, and coq au vin as she spends the better part of the movie (it spans about a decade of her life) working on the book that would become her namesake’s cooking Bible.

So I guess you could call it a tale of two biddies. It’s based on two separate autobiographies: Julie Powell’s “Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen” and Julia Child’s “My Life in France.” The parallels in their lives abound. In each story line, the women go from bureaucratic day jobs to pursuing their passion. In each, a loving husband remains devoted through all their ups and downs. And for each, age plays a pivotal role. While Julie suffers from (what would you call it when it’s too late to be quarter-life but too early to be mid-life) crisis, for Julia, who has reached the end of her childbearing years without offspring to show for it, life is sometimes bittersweet.

But there’s also a way in which director Nora Ephron presents two separate movies about two very different women. From the printed silk dresses and feathered turbans to the flower-vendor-choked Parisian streets and spacious, well-equipped kitchens, Julia’s world is perfectly enchanting. The camera can’t help but make love to the mise en scene. Likewise, the characters that occupy Julia’s world, forthright Simone Beck (Linda Emond), flighty Louisette Bertholle (Helen Carey) and especially Paul as played by Tucci, are a joy to watch.

Then there’s Meryl Streep. As lauded as she has been throughout her career, I have always contended that she has a tendency to over-act. In Julie & Julia, however, she shines as brightly as I’ve ever seen her. Her exuberance, her obvious sense of comic timing, and her chemistry with Tucci make the film a delight. When Streep and Tucci are onscreen together, particularly during their high-spirited love scenes, I didn’t want the story to ever take me back to Julie’s world.

Hers is one of pure misery, characterized by dowdy work attire, dirty New York streets, and occasional glimpses of the hole in the ground that haunts every New Yorker. It’s not that Amy Adams does a bad acting job in this film. It’s just that, unfortunately, her bag of acting tricks is not (yet) full enough to overcome such long odds. She frequently resorts to the wide-eyed, baby-voiced delivery that were her bread-and-butter in Enchanted. The technique may have gone unnoticed if I weren’t simultaneously watching Streep fully inhabit her role, gawky 6’2” lumber and all, as only a consummate character actress can. In Adams’ defense, though, I can’t name a single Hollywood ingénue that could withstand that comparison.

Not that Child herself would appreciate such a defense. “Never apologize,” she would say. And with that in mind, Julie & Julia is an overall excellent film and a nice addition to the growing list of celluloid love stories about food. Bon appétit.